


Ink on mangled skin

by BeijaFlor



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Light Angst, M/M, Raymond´s younger self, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-08-22 07:19:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16593374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeijaFlor/pseuds/BeijaFlor
Summary: The thing about destiny was that she was a fickle little bitch with an unforgiving streak a mile wide. She gave you a soulmate and a soulmark to recognize your fated one by, but if you didn’t appreciate her gift and rejected whom she had chosen for you by destroying said soulmark you didn’t just shatter the bond – you erased everything about it completely from your own memory. Except for the pain.Damien Darkh burned Ray´s soulmark off his skin and destroyed all hope of him ever finding his soulmate. But engaging in time travel had it´s perks, expecially if you kidnapped your younger self. Destiny might give second chances after all.





	Ink on mangled skin

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone! This is not my first fanfiction, but my first on AO3. And the first time I post in English (yup, non-native speaker here). I hope you read and enjoy!
> 
> Warning for the smut-averse: There is a little bit of sex at the end. It´s just a few paragraphs that you can easily skip or skim over.

The thing about destiny was that she was a fickle little bitch with an unforgiving streak a mile wide. She gave you a soulmate and a soulmark to recognize your fated one by, but if you didn’t appreciate her gift – suffice to say that destroying someone’s soulmark was considered a crime worse than murder. Because if you rejected whom fate had chosen for you by destroying said soulmark you didn’t just shatter the bond – you erased everything about it completely from your own memory. Except for the pain.

When Damien Darkh captured Ray, held him in a little lightless box and tortured him to get him to give up his suit that was the opposite of a fun vacation. Ray had a hard time wrapping his mind around how a man could come up with so many ways to torture someone shrunk down to the size of a matchbox _and_ protected by an impenetrable suit. It kept him occupied in the long hours spent alone in the dark, prisoner in his own head.

Trying to anticipate Darkh’s next cruelty to steel his mind against it was all Ray had to keep him from losing it while he waited for rescue. But it became insignificant the moment Darkh did not only figure out where on Ray’s body destiny had placed his soulmark but also a way to burn it off his skin despite the suit.

It would have been the one thing to make Ray cave, but it had been five months and Darkh was displeased and not in the mood to listen to his captive’s desperate begging. Maybe because he had realized that Felicity had managed to reach out to Ray and that the cavalry was on the way. It was his last chance to get to Ray and he used it to utterly destroy him.

The pain of it made Ray faint but the loss tugging at his heart pulled him out from down under and searing loneliness settled into his bones. Shortly after Felicity and Diggle found him in a see-through cubicle curled in on himself and whimpering. Ray would have given a lot to not be in the dark for just a few minutes in the last five month, but now he didn’t particularly care. His mind was a dark place and the world had lost its shine.

He didn’t notice his rescue party at first and when he did he just wanted them to leave him alone. His body hurt where he had been burned and destiny proceeded to shred his heart with her vengeful claws. Right this very moment? He didn’t want to be rescued. He didn’t want to live anymore.

Of course Team Arrow didn’t particular care – or rather they cared about him a lot but not about his self-destructive wishes – and saved him anyway. From what Ray was not sure, the worst had already been done to him. Of course they knew what was up as soon as they had him in the escape car. Because Ray’s mind was jarred and he was mumbling and when Felicity was panicking and fussing over him and touching him all over – because he was covered in bruises and sometimes blood and she didn’t know how to deal with that – she found the seared spot of skin and listened to his words that she had been talking over so far. “He took them,” was all Ray’s tongue seemed capable of forming, those the only words on his minds. For days. He stopped talking altogether sometime after that. Something inside him had died and he felt like he was only a shell left behind, waiting to stop breathing so his mind could finally follow his broken and dead heart.

 

~*~

 

As a young man Ray hadn’t believed he of all people would find his soulmate. It sure was a thing everyone believed in in some way at least, but not everyone got lucky. His parents hadn’t gotten lucky. But they were still perfectly capable of building a family, doing right by their sons and raising them into good people. They had still loved each other, hadn’t they? So what did it matter?

Anna’s soulmark had never properly formed, indicating her soulmate had died before reaching adulthood. She was one of those lost souls society looked down upon with pity. Ray hadn’t minded. He had been young and in love and his own soulmate nowhere in sight.

They had started dating and everything had been wonderful until the day Ray spotted the incomplete soulmark on Anna’s shoulder and his world shattered because he had thought for a moment that she was it. They sat down and had that talk and decided they were good together and anyway, having a soulmate didn’t mean that would even work out or Ray would ever find his. They could die any day with Ray being none the wiser. Anna’s had died and she hadn’t known them.

They decided to take a shot at life together and deal with the whole soulmate mess when it came to that.

A year later they were engaged and Anna died.

By the time Felicity came around Ray was a different man. Still cheerful, still optimistic and still not completely believing he would actually find his soulmate but also wiser. He didn’t take the soulmate thing that lightly anymore. He had grown up and his experience had formed him. He had seen friends find their soulmates and even witnessing it had been enlightening. He had loved Anna with all his heart but when he looked at the destined couples around him he could see that something had been missing between them. The bond between soulmates was not something you could replace with feelings, no matter how much of them there where or how sincere they were felt.

Ray had known Felicity wasn’t his the moment he accidently touched her for the first time. But she was quirky and funny and as much of a nerd as he was and in some ways they just fit.

They talked about it even before their first date but decided that it was okay to enjoy spending time together. Their relationship always had an expiration date ticking away but this time it was a mutual thing. And for them it was okay, at least for the time being.

Ray hid his mark from her, bandaging it so she wouldn’t see. Some people showed their soulmark off proudly, but for Ray it had always been a very private thing he didn’t want to share with the world, not even with Anna (it had always made him feel bad that he had a mark while she didn’t). Felicity had felt the same, even more after she’d realized who her soulmate was and that he – at least at that time – wasn’t interested.

Both of them had always hidden their marks away from each other and after his being burned off by Darkh Ray regretted it for the first time because Felicity – despite all their shared feelings and intimacy – couldn’t tell him what it had been.

He wished he had showed her at least once, because now he wouldn’t only not find his soulmate after all, he couldn’t even remember what his mark had looked like.

Felicity told him some of his preferences changed. That he had switched from dark chocolate to whole milk. That he suddenly was more active. That he’d stopped people watching which she assured him he had enjoyed quite a lot.

But it was only a thing people who knew him could see, because he didn’t remember liking things different. He just was this other person now and he didn’t remember the Ray from before or what had changed.

 

~*~

 

Leonard had been rejected his whole life. His mother had died, abandoning him and his sister and their father hadn’t really wanted them either. When he went to jail again, Child Service came around and took Len and Lisa with them. But the system didn’t particular care for the children of a criminal and it did its best to fail them on every opportunity. A string of bad to horrible foster families later, Leonard found himself in juvie.

It was there that for the first time (the second, if truth be told, because his little sister always looked up to him with adoration in her eyes and never let go of his hand, but then she was just a kid and would figure out sooner or later that she was better off without Leonard) that someone seemed to care. For no apparent reason Mick Rory chose to stand up for Len and proceeded to take him under his wing. And despite their partnership more often than not being rocky instead of peachy, he didn’t let go of Len.

Mick’s unwavering presence led Leonard to believe that maybe – just maybe – his soulmate might want to hold on to him, too. He was supposed to after all.

His hopes came crashing down around him in fire and pandemonium when while on a job there was a sudden and searing pain in the pit of his stomach and he didn’t manage to dodge a shot properly and Mick and Lisa had to drag his sorry bleeding ass to safety in a storm of bullets, gold and fire.

Back in the safe house Mick held him down while Lisa pulled off his soiled trousers to have a look at the graze in his thigh. Leonard fought against the hold because his bullet wound really didn’t matter to him in the moment, but Mick had always been stronger and didn’t let up until Lisa had patched him up. When both of them finally pulled off him Len’s hands immediately went for his underwear. “Whoa, I really don’t want to see your junk, Lenny,” Lisa protested but Leonard didn’t give a damn. He lifted the hem and stared at the juncture where his thigh met his groin, right next to his hipbone. Dread coiled around his heart and his fingers began to shake, something they hadn’t done since his very first job with Lewis, on which he had been slapped for his unsteady hands. “It’s fading,” he whispered, unbelieving.

He should have never gotten his hopes up that his soulmate, the person destined to be with him, really wanted anything to do with him. Maybe being rejected again wouldn’t have hurt so much then.

 

~*~

 

When Rip Hunter recruited them for his suicide mission including time travel (which sounded way more awesome than it actually turned out to be) and a bunch of wannabe heroes that made Leonard’s lip curl with disgust, he hadn’t been impressed. Not in the least. But then again he didn’t have much left for him in 2016, no soulmate, no otherwise significant other, no nothing. And stealing would be much easier in the past where there were no security systems.

And who knew what could happen? Maybe Leonard stumbled upon his soulmate somewhere along the way and got a chance to punch them in the face.

So he decided he had nothing to lose and maybe something to gain and showed up at the address Hunter had given them. Mick took one hard look at him and tagged along. He didn’t demand explanations (which Leonard had already carefully planned out because he was convinced Mick would balk at the idea of leaving their world behind) and shut Leonard down with a single look when he opened his mouth to talk about it.

Leonard didn’t try to hide his disdain over their ragtag band and he soon zeroed in on the filthy rich and annoyingly optimistic guy with the shrinking and flying suit as his favorite target. He did get a kick out of taking him down a peg at every opportunity.

It took Raymond being stupid and taking a near deadly beating for Mick in that filthy gulag and then more or less dying while fixing the hull of the _Waverider_ for Leonard to take a closer look at the man. What a surprise that when weak and injured, Raymond’s mask was penetrable. And what Leonard saw wasn’t the Boy Scout with a hero complex.

It was a broken man with a death wish.

He still couldn’t fathom why picking on him suddenly felt so cruel and left Leonard nauseated.

He preferred not to think about it and pushed it from his mind as far as he could.

 

~*~

 

Rescuing a younger version of himself and taking him aboard the _Waverider_ was like destiny offering a second chance. It was unheard of and Ray couldn’t believe she would give him of all people a break.

Which was why he crowded younger-him in the med bay as soon as everyone else had filtered out, pinned him to the gurney with one hand and wrestled with his shirtsleeve to get it up and out of the way.

“Hey!” younger-him protested and pushed against him. “What are you doing?”

Leave it to Ray and his stubbornness to put up a fight against himself. “I need to see!” he snarled and of course his younger self caught on because there was really only one reason why he would try to get a look at the secret place on the inside of his upper arm.

“How dare you!” Younger-him kneed Ray to the guts and shoved him away as he doubled over and went to his knees. “You have no right! How could you reject our soulmate? How could you be so cruel?”

The pain at that thought, at what anguish Darkh’s action had caused his soulmate, made Ray curl in on himself and want to die. “I didn’t, he _took_ them from me!” The memory was excruciating agony.

His sob stopped younger-him short. “What?” he whispered. “Someone took our soulmate away? Why would anyone do that?”

Ray retreated into the farthest corner and hugged his legs to his chest. “Please, I just want to see. I just want to _remember_.”

Younger-him carefully moved to his side, murmuring soothing words as if talking to a spooked animal. He squatted next to him and gently pulled Ray into his arms, hugging him because that was all Ray wanted to do whenever he saw someone suffer. Because it was all he yearned for himself when he was suffering. “Hey now, no crying. How about you tell me what happened?”

And the whole sorry story tumbled out of Ray because if he couldn’t trust himself, who else was left? And younger-him would be sent on his way with a memory pill to wipe all of this from his mind again so what did it matter if he told him about the future?

When he finished younger-him stared at the opposite wall, his face pensive. “You have a time ship. Why not go back and prevent this?”

Ray sighed. He felt dejected and tired. His heart bled. “Because some idiot took the jump-ship on a joyride to fix his own past and it didn’t work because time likes to fix itself. So I asked Gideon to play out different possibilities of me changing the past. Whatever I thought to do, warn myself to evade capture, free myself, give Oliver and his team the heads-up, it always turned out the same. I was captured and Darkh destroyed my soulmark. The only way to prevent that from happening would have been to give up my suit in which case the world would have burned. No one would have survived fighting Darkh and he wouldn’t have been defeated. There would have been no future to go back to.” He closed his eyes and leaned his head on younger-his shoulder. “I just want to see it one more time.”

“It’s a snowflake.”

Ray raised his head. Younger-him gently disentangled himself and took off his shirt, turned his arm up and showed him. “See? I like to think it’s the reason we like the winter and the cold so much.”

Ray stared at the mark, reverently brushed a finger over the slightly raised skin. He had no recollection of it whatsoever. “I don’t like the cold.” Younger-him gave him a good-natured pat on the shoulder. “Yes we do, you just don’t remember. But you might, because I have an idea.”

 

~*~

 

They had managed to snatch all of their younger selves and were on their way to the Last Refuge. There would be a few hours of downtime until they reached their destination and while Mick sat on a crate cleaning his Heat Gun, Sara had joined Leonard on the floor for another game of cards. While they normally played for insane amounts of money or favors (they were both excellent cheaters and they had to get their kicks somehow) today their game was only a flimsy try at distraction. The prospect of blinking out of existence because the Pilgrim murdered their younger selves was scaring and Leonard really just wanted to get baby-him to safety. Which definitely was _not_ the _Waverider_ , especially not a _Waverider_ with teenage-Mick aboard.

He was already tense and snippy when Raymond stumbled into the cargo bay. “You and you,” he jabbed his finger first at Leonard, then at Mick. “You were in prison. Any experience with ink?”

Leonard raised one eyebrow. “Do I look like I do tattoos?” he drawled with contempt. Not that he had expected the Boy Scout to be interested in one. Way to disappoint his parents.

But Mick had perked up. “I could brand you?” he offered. The horrified expression on Raymond’s face was so amusing Leonard felt his lips twitch.

“Er, no, thanks,” he tried to placate Mick. “Been there, done that, was no fun. No need for a repeat experience.” And wasn’t that some interesting information? Leonard had never seen any burn scars on Raymond’s body. Or any scars at all for that matter.

Sara dropped her cards and stretched. “I know how to do a tattoo.”

Raymond’s eyes lit up and Leonard hated how that excited expression made his stomach flutter. “But I’m not any good, the arts were never my forte.” And out went the light again. Leonard really should feel satisfaction at that, instead his stomach plummeted.

“I would need you to just copy something.”

Sara shook her head. “Sorry, I’m absolutely useless unless someone else draws it on and I just have to retrace the lines.”

“Snart can do that.” Mick’s rasp made Leonard jump and he opened his mouth to protest but Raymond had already turned towards him, eyes full of that light and as big as a puppy’s and he nearly vibrated out of his skin with excitement. “You’re my guy then. Please? Pretty please? You can ask anything of me, but please draw that design for me. It’s really small, shouldn’t take too long, but I really, really need to get that tattoo?” And wasn’t that an offer he couldn’t decline? “Anything?” he repeated a tad suspicious. Not that he had an idea yet what to use the favor for, but the opportunity was just too good to pass up.

Raymond did look a bit worried but he didn’t back out either. He nodded and Leonard was slightly impressed. And curious what it was that made Boy Scout hand out a carte blanche.

“What do I get?” Sara grinned and tapped her knee with a finger, clearly she had something already on her mind. “My eternal gratitude?” Raymond offered sheepishly and Sara snorted. But her eyes narrowed at the pretty boy. “He’s plotting something,” she murmured towards Leonard. He reacted with a little twitch of an eyebrow that translated to _are you sure about that?_ because he couldn’t imagine straight-laced Raymond to ever plot anything in his life. This should be interesting.

“Let’s get this over with before I change my mind.”

He stood up and brushed by Raymond. “Where to?”

“The med bay, Gideon should have prepared the needle by now.”

Snart shook his head in disbelieve. How had Raymond wrestled Gideon into going along with this? He led the way to the med bay, not surprised that Mick decided to tag along. When he entered the younger Raymond was sitting on one of the gurneys, one leg twitching with nervous energy. He was shirtless (and wasn’t that a nice upper body to look at) and rubbed a spot on the inside of his upper arm. Sara gasped at the sight and Snart glanced over to her. She had clasped a hand over her mouth, compassion and distress warring on her features. Her whisper was filled with pity. “Oh Ray, this is never going to work:”

“Well, I have to try and this is the only chance I will get. I want it back!” He strode past Sara and Leonard, pulled off his own shirt and then ripped off the bandage around his upper arm – placed in the exact same spot younger-Raymond was worrying – that Leonard had always suspected hid his soulmark but instead revealed burned skin. Leonard couldn’t comprehend it. He stared at the mangled skin while his chest constricted and his head became dizzy.

He had never expected Boy Scout to be a Rejecter. It made him want to hurl.

Because as annoying as Raymond might be, he also was the kindest person Leonard had the displeasure of ever meeting. He didn’t have a cruel bone in him. Which made him destroying his soulmark worse than it already was. How could someone like Raymond _not_ want his soulmate?

Leonard would never meet his own soulmate to strangle like he longed to, but here was a man who had done the unthinkable and he was within Leonard’s reach. He wanted to avenge that poor bastard Raymond hat rejected and he wanted to avenge himself. It was like a red haze laying itself over his eyes and suddenly there was only anger inside him. “You disgusting son of a bitch!” he snarled and propelled himself forward. He faintly heard Mick power up his gun but never made it farther than two steps before Sara was on him. She screamed and hit and wrestled him to the ground where she held him with surprising strength despite heaving sobs from her chest. “He didn’t do it, it’s not his fault!” And wasn’t it astonishing to see the one woman Leonard had thought incapable of shedding even a single tear cry like this?’

“Explain!” Mick snarled while Leonard was still momentarily speechless. Mick’s Heat Gun was trained on their Raymond who stood frozen. Younger-Raymond had leapt from his gurney and was creeping in the direction of his older self as if to try and protect him.

“Damien Darkh did it.” Sara slowly eased up on his back, her knee not pressing that hard into Leonard’s spine anymore. “He’d captured Ray and held him prisoner and we were too late. We tried to save him, but we were too late.” She slipped off Leonard and sagged to the floor next to him, defeated. He carefully sat back up and rubbed his hurting back. Watched Raymond who held his scarred arm in a death grip and seemed to be miles away until younger-Raymond touched his shoulder and he returned to reality with a flinch.

“Yes, well, shit happened. Can we get to the part where we ink the mark back onto my skin, please?” He clearly tried to project his usual upbeat behavior but this time Leonard saw right through it. Raymond was tightly strung and fraying around the edges. He was about to fly apart.

Leonard couldn’t imagine the pain he must have felt at not only losing his soulmate but also at making that poor person think he rejected them. Suddenly Leonard’s mouth was very dry.

“Okay,” he rasped. “Let’s do this.”

He went to younger-Raymond and motioned for him to show him the mark while Mick powered down his gun and helped Sara back to her feet. “You guys realize that this will not work?”

Younger-Raymond smiled meekly at her. “We have to at least try. This is our only shot to make things right for us _and_ our soulmate.”

Well, the likelihood of destiny making an exception was close to zilch, but Leonard understood that eternally optimistic Raymond wanted to try. His younger self seemed even more optimistic. Seemed like losing his soulmark while taking Raymond down a notch or two hadn’t completely wiped his sunny personality away. Which was nice. His own soulmark fading had made Leonard only more withdrawn than he already was.

He took younger-Raymond’s arm and inspected his mark. It was a small but intricate pattern looking like an elegant snowflake. Leonard’s own mark hadn’t been near as beautiful. It had come late, long after his puberty, which was why he always suspected his soulmate to be quite a bit younger than him and was more of a messy scrawl than any real design. He had never understood what it was supposed to be. After seeing the stylized little bird on Lisa’s ankle and the flame behind Mick’s ear he had thought he had just bad luck but seeing Raymond’s mark which was a work of art he wondered if there was meaning to the quality of the soulmark and if destiny designed some people’s marks with extra care while not giving a single shit about how others turned out. He was so enraptured that he traced younger-Raymond’s mark with his finger before pulling back quickly. “Sorry,” he apologized, not able to look the man in the eye. Because touching someone else’s soulmark was the most intimate gesture and you just didn’t _do_ that, it was absolutely inappropriate. Leonard quickly shook off the strange sensation echoing through him. He had broken an unwritten law and he really didn’t want to feel the slightest reverberation of another person’s soulbond. It just reminded him of what he had lost.

“I think I can copy this.”

Which was how he found himself drawing and redrawing the pattern on Raymond’s arm over and over until he got it right and it was perfect. He watched Sara tattoo it in as anxious as the Raymonds and Mick, who was a comforting presence. He didn’t offer up Leonard’s own sob story but he knew exactly why he wanted to help and refrained from commenting. Mick had been lucky that he didn’t destroy his own mark when he accidently set himself on fire. And he had been much more careful ever since.

After what felt like an eternity and then some, Sara set the needle down. “Done,” she said. They all watched as Raymond traced the tattoo. Leonard found himself holding his breath. “You… Do you feel something?” younger-Raymond breached the silence. Raymond flinched – again – and ripped his hand off his arm, snapping it into a fist. “No,” he said flatly.

Younger-Raymond reached out to touch his shoulder but Raymond slapped his arm away. “Don’t touch me!” he snarled and Leonard had never before heard such malice in Raymond´s voice. He struck out and upended the tray the ink and needle rested on. It crashed to the floor and ink splattered all over their feet. While younger-Raymond and Sara rushed to calm Raymond Leonard slowly retreated and Mick followed his cue. Which was the right decision, because Raymond shoved them away and stormed out of the med bay.

“Don’t.” Leonard’s commanding tone stopped Sara and younger-Raymond short. “You can’t help him now, you don’t know anything about his pain.”

And maybe he shouldn’t have elaborated because understanding dawned on Sara’s face. “But you do,” she whispered. Leonard sighed and looked the other way, composed himself with an iron will. He faced her again and gave her a blank, unreadable face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he drawled and stalked out of the med bay.

Mick of course followed him and bodily dragged him into his quarters before Leonard found a way to ditch him. He was pushed down on Mick’s dingy couch and his friend sat down heavily beside him. For a moment they shared a thoughtful silence, then Mick kicked up his feet on the couch table and squinted at Leonard. “A snowflake, huh?”

“Leave it, Mick!”

“Timing fits, I guess.”

Leonard huffed. He had always known Mick wasn’t half as dumb as he played it, but he would have liked it better if he wasn’t this smart either. At least not about this.

“Let it go,” Leonard advised but it sounded more like a plea. He started to stand but Mick’s rough hand clamped down on his arm and kept him seated. He didn’t say anything more, but the silence between them did enough talking.

 

~*~

 

Ray didn’t look up when his door opened. He’d told Gideon to keep everyone outside but never really believed she wouldn’t let someone talk her into unlocking his doors again. She liked to meddle.

What he definitely hadn’t expected was Snart settling against the pillows next to him. He was so startled that he raised his head and then watched incredulously as Snart calmly proceeded to fill two glasses from an amphora that looked suspiciously like one that had been standing on one of Rip’s shelves not too long ago.

“I think it’s wine. At least it’s supposed to be, but I don’t know if it has turned back by now or what it even was to begin with.”

Snart seemed calm and collected; his brow slightly furrowed as he rested the amphora against a pillow between them, contemplating the contents of the glasses before handing one to Ray. “Drink up, whatever it is must either be holy or spiked with drugs that are bound to make you feel good. No other way that longhaired self-made priest had everyone tagging along with him.” He sniffed his drink, took a tentative sip and made a face. “Tastes good. No wonder he and Rip hit it off, makes you want to swallow all those lies with a smile.”

Ray held on to his glass and still couldn’t wrap his mind around the fact that Leonard Snart had not only tried to ink Ray’s lost soulmark back into his skin without – so far – asking for anything, but now wanted to cheer him up by sharing the wine Jesus had supposedly turned water into and let Rip take an amphora of with him. Also, he was talking without being mean.

He shook his head to try and jumble things back together in a way that made sense but no such luck. So alcohol it was. Maybe holy godly stuff even.

Ray put the glass to his lips and knocked it back. Held the empty one towards Snart for a refill. The warmth going down his throat hit him with a short delay, as did the taste that exploded on his tongue. He groaned ecstatically. Snart chuckled. “Savor the next one, the taste really is that good.”

So Ray did. And it tasted that good. They sat in silence, drinking and staring at the far wall.

“Mine rejected me,” Snart suddenly said. “We were on a job, in the middle of some heated skirmish, not the best moment.” He silently contemplated his glass. “I thought I was going to die.”

Ray swallowed hard. “I’m sorry,” he croaked through a tight throat. He could imagine the pain Snart had felt and the devastation of being abandoned.

They drank in silence. When the amphora was empty Snart sat it on the floor next to Ray’s bed. The both drank their last glass, still staring at the far wall, shoulders touching. Ray took his last sip, savored it in his mouth and handed the glass to Snart to put it aside. He thought maybe Snart would stand up and leave now, even if Ray would like him to stay, but he didn’t. Instead Snart turned to Ray, cupped his face with his callused hands and kissed him. He tasted of wine and something else. Ray slipped his tongue inside Snart’s mouth to chase that taste and find out what it was. He didn’t, of course, but Snart didn’t seem to mind the prolonged kissing either, so there was that. And then Snart’s hands found their way under Ray’s shirt and they were warm and gentle. They lost their clothing pretty fast after that and Ray wondered if it was only the wine making him attractive to Snart. And if it was the same the other way round. Or if it was their shared loss that brought them together.

To Ray’s surprise he didn’t mind Snart taking charge, pushing him onto his back and straddling him, guiding their straining erections together. Instead he let his hands wander over the exposed skin and pulled Snart into another kiss. Their grinding took Ray to the brink unusually fast but Snart pulled back in the last moment. His eyes burned into Ray. “I want you,” he growled. Ray blinked against the haze of arousal. “Huh?” Snart just rolled his eyes and then started unceremoniously jacking himself off. “What are you doing?” Ray asked, his mind slow to follow. Just a minute ago they were grinding their dicks together and he had felt good, better than he remembered such a simple act to feel, and now Snart was finishing alone. He tried to reach for the man, tried to reach for his own dick but Snart slapped his hands away impatiently. He came with a grunt all over Ray’s groin and didn’t that make his dick jump?

Snart obviously had plans because he dragged his fingers through the mess, jacked Ray’s erection once or twice with it and then reached around his back. And finally Ray’s mind caught up. He gaped as excitement slammed into him. “You…you…” Words abandoned him as he watched Snart finger himself, drank in his form, how his body moved, his back bowed and curved, his dick came back to life. His hands trembled on Snart´s hips as said man grasped Ray’s overexcited dick and sank down onto it with a smirk. He moaned at the warmth and the tightness. He felt close to him in a way he had never felt close to anyone before. He didn’t mind Snart setting the pace, he could just hang on, hold the man close with all the out of place tenderness he suddenly felt and hope it would last forever.

 

~*~

 

Leonard woke up to the low hum of the _Waverider_ , dimmed lights and the smell of a bed that wasn’t his. Also a warm body smothering him. He groaned at that.

Had he really slept with Raymond out of pity and in hope of somehow salvaging the soulbond they might have had if the re-inking of Raymond’s soulmark had worked? Of course that hadn’t changed anything either and Len only had a sore ass and a pounding skull to show for his stupidity. “Get off, you stupid lug!” he groused and shoved Raymond’s shoulder angrily. Of course that heavy shoulder didn’t move at all. But Raymond woke, whined and curled tighter around Leonard’s body, burying his face in his neck and nudging his flaccid dick with his thigh in the process. Which said dick promptly took as a wakeup call.

Annoyed Len shoved at Raymond again, causing the man to mumble and wrestle Len’s body under him to still him. Len’s erect dick didn’t escape notice. With a cheeky grin Raymond dove under the covers, kissed his way down Leonard’s quivering stomach and took Len into his mouth, effectively wiping out all bad thoughts about waking up in a bed not his own. And all other thoughts as well except for _warm_ and _wet_ and _good_ and _please don’t stop, don’t ever stop_!

Afterwards Raymond rested his head on Len’s stomach and caressed him, his dick, his balls, his pubes, his thigh. Even the secret, sacred place his soulmark used to be. Leonard slapped Raymond’s hand away, growling angrily. No one touched that intimate place!

But Raymond just looked at him with a sunny smile, bright light shining in his eyes. “That’s my signature,” he announced happily. Len regarded him for a moment, his heart beating a nervous staccato, his chest tightening. Then he gathered all his courage and peered down to the juncture of his thigh and groin. His soulmark was there, an ink-black messy scrawl where a long time ago that same messy scrawl had been in the color of a birthmark.

He sighed deeply. “You know, if your handwriting was less sloppy we could have had this resolved ages ago…”


End file.
